7. POLICE CORRUPTION AS A POLICY ISSUE
7.4 W HAT TO DO WITH POLICE CORRUPTION WHEN THE WHOLE REGIME FLOATS ?
What to do with police corruption when corruption permeates the public apparatus almost everywhere? This is in a sense a problem of a different kind than the one we have discussed so far, with the exception of corruption in the traffic police. This is a situation where regular policy thinking tends to break down. To solve a policy problem, we normally consider a policy instrument that a public agency may manipulate to improve an existing situation. It is exogenous. In the case of extensive corruption, however, that way of thinking breaks down.
Extensive corruption implies that the main problem is located among the agents supposed to dispose policy instruments. Corruption is a crime and the regular agencies that should deal with it are the courts and the police. When they are corrupt no one in decision-making positions may be able and/or have an interest in doing anything, except the citizens who are taxed by it, but they rarely have the power to act effectively in this matter. In such situations it is difficult to suggest concrete policy proposals except for pious wishes for a change in the top political leadership.
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Crime and the fear of being hit by crime and small-scale violence are key economic and social problems in most developing countries, not least felt strongly by the poor. Extensive corruption in the police, experienced or perceived, contributes seriously to the problem. A key question raised in the paper is: How is police corruption linked to the wider processes of development – including crime, violence and poverty? The paper examines (i) how and why corruption may arise in the daily routines of the police and whether it may have impacts on crime rates; (ii) empirical indications of whether the police may be more corrupt than other groups of public officials; (iii) how and why police corruption may vary across countries;
and (iv) the wider impacts of police corruption on development
Printed version: ISSN 0804-3639 Electronic version: ISSN 1890-5048 Printed version: ISBN 978-82-8062-258-7 Electronic version: ISBN 978-82-8062-259-4